President Barack Obama Tuesday laid out his multi-year plan to remove the last troops from Afghanistan and end the longest war in American history — while positioning himself to lay out a path forward on foreign policy in his address to West Point graduates Wednesday morning.

“The bottom line is, it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Obama said in the Rose Garden, explaining the goal of moving to 9,800 troops on the ground by the end of 2014, half that by the end of 2015 and a small support force left there by the time he leaves office.

“Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them — but this is how wars end in the 21st century,” Obama said.

He pledged that the resources saved would be redirected to a smarter approach to counterterrorism and the protection of U.S. security. Americans will remain engaged in supporting Afghan security and fighting al Qaeda in the country.

But the direct help that American troops have been providing is over, Obama said — even if the country is still in need of more help.

“Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one,” he said.

Obama also warned that Americans are prepared to leave the country entirely by the end of 2014 if the next Afghan president follows outgoing President Hamid Karzai’s lead and refuses to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement.

“This presence, which is contingent on a signed bilateral security agreement, will help ensure that al Qaeda cannot reconstitute itself in Afghanistan, and it will help us sustain the significant progress we have made in training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement.

Both of the leading candidates to succeed Karzai have said they would, giving the president confidence in making Tuesday’s announcement ahead of the June 14 elections there, a White House official said ahead of the president’s remarks.

In his own statement released shortly after the president finished speaking, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the recent elections in Afghanistan and the leading candidates who made it to the next round have made for “encouraging days for Afghanistan’s future.”

“The Afghan people have an opportunity now to build on the progress that’s been made, to achieve a more secure, more prosperous, and more peaceful future,” Kerry said.

On Wednesday at West Point, Obama said, he will attempt to look past that conflict in a broader vision of his foreign policy philosophy.

“What the president wants to do tomorrow is be very clear about what the next chapter of American leadership in the world is,” the White House official said. “Doing this today allows for him to focus on Afghanistan and then put that in the broader context tomorrow.”

The 9,800 troops the president referenced to today include those committed to the NATO regional advisory force and the counterterrorism efforts. The next milepost in securing the post-2014 troop presence may lie in Europe: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is traveling to Belgium this week for a meeting with other NATO defense ministers at which Afghanistan will be Topic A.

Obama talked by phone on Tuesday with his British, Italian and German counterparts about his Afghanistan announcement, the White House said, as well as Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Obama’s decision to notify Karzai by phone was another signal that the White House considers him old news in Afghanistan — the president could have told him in person when he visited Bagram Air Base over the weekend, but the two leaders did not meet, only speaking by phone shortly before the president wrapped up his four-hour trip there Sunday.

Pentagon officials and American commanders have said they’ve endorsed a plan under which as many as 12,000 total NATO troops would stay in Afghanistan starting next year. With 9,800 of them now set as Americans, Hagel will be looking for commitments for the remaining 2,200.

Republicans and foreign policy hawks on Tuesday praised Obama for adhering to military commanders’ recommendations about troop levels, but faulted him for again announcing when they’d come home right as he announced they’d be there.

“Holding this mission to an arbitrary egg-timer doesn’t make a lick of sense strategically,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) “Does the president seek to replicate his mistakes in Iraq where he abandoned the region to chaos and failed to forge a real security partnership?

“…We are in Afghanistan because it was the spawning ground of al-Qaeda and the devastating attack on American soil. Those threats still exist. We leave when the Afghans can manage that threat, rather than on convenient political deadlines that favor poll numbers over our security,” said McKeon.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who made a trip to Afghanistan this spring, said he wanted to learn more about the details about how the U.S. troops in Afghanistan will cover their missions and protect themselves — but also warned against getting out too soon.

“The biggest takeaway from my visit is that of all the challenges facing our strategy for Afghanistan, the most potentially damaging and completely avoidable is quitting just short of the goal line,” Boehner said.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the plan “unquestionably advances our national security interests in Afghanistan,” adding, “make no mistake: our Armed Forces and intelligence agencies will continue to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven to plot attacks against America and her allies.”

Critics have also argued that 10,000 troops are too few to provide meaningful help to the Afghan National Security Forces and also protect themselves from terrorists and insider attacks. And even another three years of American military help won’t solve Afghanistan’s larger, longer-term problems, including endemic corruption and intense poverty.

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, has warned that those two problems could be the cause of a post-American implosion there. Kabul can’t afford the military and security apparatus U.S. forces and officials have built for Afghanistan since 2001.

The government is so corrupt, Sopko warned, that foreign governments and companies are dialing back or cancelling investment there. If Afghanistan can’t grow its economy to afford its own defense and security, that might imperil the progress for which the U.S. has paid so heavily.